Hon Christopher Finlayson

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) : I think the member missed out mea maxima culpa, because this was a grievous error on the part of the Labour Party. Actually it should not be “mea”; it should probably be “nostra”. But it is good to see that the member is repenting.

History has shown us that the only possible way to make a major change in electoral law is to have an element of agreement between political parties. That statement is as true today as it was when Ralph Hanan said it in this House over 50 years ago, during the passage of the Electoral Act 1956. Sadly, the idea of a consensual, non-partisan approach to the amendment of New Zealand’s electoral law was a foreign concept to the previous Labour Government. That Government joined with New Zealand First and the Greens to force through this House, with the narrowest of margins, legislation that contravened the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and was totally unacceptable.

Today this Government is taking the first steps to repair the conventions that were trampled over by the previous Labour Government, and is restoring the tradition of consultation and consensus on electoral law that Governments should always have. It is in the public interest that there be cross-party consensus on electoral law, and that is why I was so impressed by Mr Parker’s contribution. It revealed a level of maturity and decency that was not present in 2007.

We have been in this situation before, of course. National Governments have periodically been forced to deal with the electoral amendment disasters that have been inflicted on us by Labour over the last 60 years. In 1945 Labour altered the composition of the Representation Commission, to stack it with Government appointees, and we had to fix that up in 1950.

Chris Auchinvole: How old were you?

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I was a gleam in the eye of my parents!

In 1975 the Labour Government forced through a range of changes to screw the scrum in its favour. The entrenched provisions of the Electoral Act stopped it from getting some of those changes through; the rest we had to tidy up in 1976 and in 1977. Now, in 2009, we have to deal with Labour’s latest error of judgment. In doing so—and it is important to note this—we will behave better than the previous Government did. We will not keep on the statute book legislation that we said—and I repeated this on numerous occasions during the Committee stage of the electoral finance debate—confers massive advantages on the Government and on incumbent members of Parliament.

Labour passed the Act in order to shut the National Party out of Government, but there will be no utu from the National Party, because it is in the public interest that we band together to get back to a situation where there is proper discussion between all parties on these very important issues. It was indeed a wake-up call for me, as a tyro MP, to see that the safeguards that exist in our constitution to prevent the passage of laws like this one are inadequate.

As the House will know, earlier this week I provided a section 7 report, under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, on the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Amendment Bill. Under this Government the Attorney-General will be prepared to make those reports. The previous Government made a total mockery of the system. My predecessor failed to table a section 7 report on the Electoral Finance Bill; even though that Government knew that the legislation breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and even though we had a number of submissions from the Human Rights Commission to the Justice and Electoral Committee saying the bill severely trampled over rights of freedom of expression.

So we stand here today to rectify the situation caused by the very Act that the now deputy leader of the Labour Party said does not restrict free speech and Mr Chauvel called a very good bill. I agree with the Leader of the Opposition that Labour did not have the consensus it should have sought out when it passed the Electoral Finance Act, and I hope the Labour members who in 2007 spoke in support of this insult to democracy will support their leader’s willingness to engage in a bipartisan manner on the reform of electoral law.

I go back to what a senior public servant said to the Justice and Electoral Committee. He said during the committee consideration that in the early 1990s it was Mr McCully for the National Party and Mr Caygill for the Labour Party who worked together to get law that was enduring. Basically, it was a two-party Parliament and they worked constructively together. I am certainly heartened by the words of Mr Parker that, going forward, all parties in this House will work constructively to get election law that endures. I think that many of the issues he has raised are very helpful and I look forward to playing my part.